The subject matter described herein relates to managing the exchange of crisis-related information, and in particular, information proliferation to and from individuals associated with multiple formal and informal organizations.
The commonly used means available today for an individual to report an emergency is to call 911 and be directed to the local police, fire, or emergency medical services. Separately, individuals will typically communicate with related groups of people, such as their families, work colleagues, team mates, classmates, and the like. Such communication is sequential, unstructured and is often prioritized based on factors that are not optimized to a speedy resolution of the crisis, potentially increasing risk to the person or others.
Existing standards and systems do not enable individuals to communicate structured crisis-related information amongst multiple organizations and/or groups of individuals. Consequently, during a crisis, individuals typically use multiple means of unstructured communications, such as phone calls, social media, and text messaging to reach all their intended audiences. This results in inefficient crisis management, risking both life and property.
Existing standards and systems do not enable organizations to engage in bi-directional communication of crisis-related information with multiple individuals or groups of individuals without previously arranging for proprietary access to the computing devices and/or networks corresponding to those individuals and groups. Consequently, organizations must use multiple means of communications to reach their intended audiences such as the Emergency Alerting System, media outlets, and one-way mass notification systems.
Typically, organizations communicate crisis-related information only with their own personnel, if at all, using one-way mass notification systems. Other organizations supply their intended audiences with proprietary means of bi-directional communications such as a dedicated application running on a smart-phone or tablet computer, or provide a call center access for individuals to report emergencies. Other organizations may use one-way public safety broadcast channels such as the Emergency Alerting System (EAS) and the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) to announce crisis situations.
One challenge for crisis communications management is providing the ability to precisely target audiences associated with the crisis for emergency communications. A scenario illustrating this challenge is provided by the following example.
An accident occurs affecting multiple individuals, including casualties, observers, first responders, and emergency management personnel. Those individuals are typically unrelated to each other and each individual is related to multiple groups which may include, but are not limited to, their families, communities, workplaces, enterprises, and educational institutions. The individuals affected are those who happen to be in the vicinity of the accident, people who work nearby, members of various law enforcement organizations, emergency medical personnel, and the like.
Throughout the evolution of the accident event, individuals need to communicate with multiple groups and organizations to which they are related. For example, accident casualties need to report, if they are able to, their location and state of injuries to both their families and first responders. Observers of the event can contribute to the situational awareness of the emergency services by sending text, images, or video reports to the relevant Public Safety Access Point (PSAP) while informing their families and workplaces that they are safe. Depending on the accident circumstances, first responders and command authorities may need to instruct the public to either stay sheltered or avoid certain areas. PSAP and command authorities may need to enlist help of various first responder and emergency medical resources which may or may not be under their direct control.
Using today's technologies, each of the constituents described in this example will use multiple communication mechanisms and channels to attempt to reach their intended audiences. Accident casualties may call 911 to report their location and state. Separately, they will call members of their families to inform them of their location and state. Observers will also attempt to call 911 to verbally report their observations. Individuals who happen to be near the accident location may call their workplaces to inform them of their own location, state, and/or details of the accident. Command authorities may use mass notification systems to inform their subscribers of the accident and required actions. The PSAP will use their proprietary communication systems to reach first responders that are under their direct control and use other communication mechanisms such as telephone calls to reach out for assistance from resources that are not under their direct control. Members of the public may tune to news media or use social networks to receive details of the event, potentially receiving information which is not authoritative, not accurate, incomplete, and/or misleading, which may result in mass confusion. Such confusion may even result in risk of physical harm to individuals who would otherwise be safe.
These various communication mechanisms and channels are unrelated to each other and must therefore be used separately and sequentially by each sender and receiver of the communication. Inevitably, these circumstances lead to delays and potentially to errors in communications, risking lives and property.
Existing organizational and community notification systems are not capable of targeting individuals who are not related to the organization or community. Availability of such individuals may be crucial to the resolution of a crisis, by virtue of their skills, physical availability, and location. As such individuals are associated with other organizations, they are not directly accessible or targetable to the manager of a crisis situation when using existing notification systems.
Yet another challenge for crisis communications management is that effective crisis management requires the participation of multiple organizations and individuals who do not have access to each of the systems participating in managing the crisis event. Such systems typically operate behind firewalls and on private networks to which only authorized individuals who are members of or related to the organization have access. No system or exchange mechanism exists today that can securely facilitate the exchange of information amongst multiple crisis management systems and individuals who participate in the crisis event who are not authorized to access all such systems.